...a photoBook is an autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film. The photographs lose their own photographic character as things 'in themselves' and become parts, translated into printing ink, of a dramatic event called a book...
- Dutch photography critic Ralph Prins

zaterdag 11 juli 2015

The seventy-six books shown here span the sixties to today, they represent a growing understanding of the history of photography and growing awareness of it’s complexities and exchanges with contemporary art. Think Daido Moriyama visiting Andy Warhol in New York, Stephen Shore visiting Ed Ruscha in Los Angeles !

Each one of the books presented here has been created with the urge to formulate a unique artistic vision, they are considered as artworks in themselves. Wether the artist has created their book with a single idea or concept in mind, or variations thereof, or to express their feelings towards any subject they felt concerned about, or as a playful experiment, each one of these publications has been valued by collectors, institutions and other artists as unprecedented artistic work. It’s only since the beginning of the twentieth century and even more so since the beginning of the fifties and sixties, that an international production of books, objects and multiples has gained such a status. The reasons for this are complex, and exhibitions and essays have been analyzing this production and it’s conditions, and the principles and codes according to which the books have been published at length, without however being able to come to final conclusions, the artist book of the twentieth century is still without a satisfying definition. It can however be stated that exhibitions and historical and critical writing are still too often separating European from American, artist books from photobooks, multiples from unlimited and unnumbered books. Artist books and photography books from Latin America, China or India have only been taken into account in very recent years, their beauty and diversity would require a larger exhibition of this matter.

Conventional wisdom places Ed Ruscha, Christian Boltanski and Dieter Roth as the originators of industrialized artist books (books which have been produced on offset-presses for example) in the mid-sixties, but precedessors can be found among Fluxus, Situationist and other postwar movements. Not even ten years after the publication of the seminal « 26 Gasoline Stations » by Ed Ruscha (1963) gallerist and curator Marion Goodman of Multiples gallery, NY, produced an object that since then became a historical reference « Artist & Photograph ». The oversized container, which was conceived as an exhibition in itself similar to the « Xerox book » (Seth Siegelaub & John Wendler, 1968) regroups the work of 19 artists of different movements : conceptual, landart, minimal, Pop Art. Photography is used in several ways, serving as tool of documentation (of art work, performance & dance), of construction, of trompe l’oeil, or as a matrix for irony and dérision. Because most of these books are as fragile as a charcoal sketch they are beneath vitrines, we believe that the object itself next to a subjective rendering of it’s touch and feel and content via video will do the books somewhat justice. Our choices are based on aleatory wanderings through libraries, collections and bookshops over the last twenty years, and by consulting with collectors and dealers alike, chosing sources as diverse as possible in order to localize books that are revered by book lovers but may have passed unnoticed next to more classical and influential books.

By publishing an index and poster listing the books and giving background information and by organizing the books on show according to shifting representational categories (Historical / A-Z / Format / Theme : Nature, Man, Archive, including their anti-thesis) we hope to make these hidden treasures and their forgotten interconnections more accessible, during the fleeting moments of Paris Photo.

#2 Ed RuschaTwentysix Gasoline StationsNational Excelsior1962"I’d always wanted to make a book of some kind. When I was in Oklahoma I got a brainstorm in the middle of the night to do this little book called Twentysix Gasoline Stations. I knew the title. I knew it would be photographs of twenty-six gasoline stations. Months went into the planning of that. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by loosening up. You know, not gotten so concerned with how I wanted the thing to look. I changed the form about fifty times at the printer’s. I realized that for the first time this book had an inexplicable thing I was looking for, and that was a kind of a “Huh?” That‘s what I’ve always worked around. All it is is a device to disarm somebody with my particular message". Ed Ruscha

#4 Gordon Matta-ClarkWallpapersBuffalo Press1973Wallspaper is a multi-part installation comprising photographs and newsprint, which Gordon Matta-Clark presented at the artist-run space 112 Greene Street in New York in 1972. Earlier that year, he took various black and white photographs of derelict and semi-demolished project houses in the Bronx and the Lower East Side of New York City. As only the facades of the buildings had been taken down, the photographs reveal the interior walls of the houses. Some of these walls were covered in paint that was flaking away, other walls were covered in wallpaper. Matta-Clark used the photographs to create his installation. First he heightened the colours of the photographs to abstract the images of the derelict houses. Next he printed the photographs on long strips of newspaper and hung these strips on a large wall from ceiling to floor. These strips were used to create a playful artist book.

#5 Richard LongRivers and StonesNewlyn1978Leaving only ephemeral traces of his performances, land artist Richard Long documents his concepts and sculptures as well as his hikes in the clearest and most engaging way.

#6 Daniel BurenHalifaxMultiplicata / Lithography Workshop of N.S.C.A.D. 19747 postcards representing a building in Halifax, with variations in the coloring of the outside, shot by a professional photographer. With a modest size and appearance but impeccable design and production the publication elegantly assures it’s status.

#8 Daido MoriyamaBye Bye Photography1972Considered as one of the most influential and radical books of it’s time, it’s the artist’s visual manifest, inspired by conceptual thougths by Takuma Nakahira - declaring the end of descriptive photography and the rebirth of the medium as a language in itself with no words as references.

#9 Barbara Schmidt-Heins1949-19791979At once a record of one presumed life and description of an advancing century this is an early example of a book recontextualizes private or anonymous photography.

#10 Françoise Janicot / Bernard HeidsieckEncoconnage Guy Schraenen 1974Interesting example of an artist’s vinyl which combines photographs of a performance by Françoise Janicot inspired by the music of Bernard Heidsieck with the actual musical recording.

#11 BRINKMANN & KRÜLLGodzillaHake 1968With colored and collaged reproductions of parts of a female body made by the artist Karl-Heinz Krüll, and poems by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann the book thinks intermediality, society and sensuality as non-exclusive in such a way that it could be an ironic comment on Walt Whitman’s « Leaves of Grass ».

#12 ALLEN RUPPERSBERG24 Pieces Self-published 196923 photographies of various locations at Los Angeles. At first glance, Allen Ruppersberg’s 23 Pieces is a photobook, a rather traditional one: black & white images, in the middle of white pages. Then comes the context. Though Ruppersberg is quoted as being the only author on the cover, we learn in the colophon that the pictures were taken by another person, Gary Krueger, a man we imagine as a professional photographer and/or a close friend of the artist.

#13 GIUSEPPE PENONESvolgere la propria pelle Sperone 1971Penone recorded the boundary of his body with hundreds of photos taken by superimposing a sheet of glass on his skin.

#14 HANS PETER FELDMANNBilder (6 /11 /12) Edition Hans-Peter Feldmann 1970-75Each one of the by now famous "Bilder"-books is centered around one subject which Feldmann explores by appropriating photographs. His production in the early seventies is comparable to what Araki does in Japan and Eijkelboom in the Netherlands, all have their specific interests and style, but share specific interests, the body, work and society, sports, et al.

#15 SOL LEWITTSunrise & Sunset at Praiano Rizzoli 1980An artists’ book by LeWitt in which images of sunrises and sunsets, taken over the sea in Praiano, Italy, are arranged in grids, four images per page, over 30 pages. More playful than his more well-known books.

#16 LES LEVINEHouseSteendrukkerij De Jong 1971"Each photograph in this book is a working plan for a sculpture or monument. The person who acquires this book should attempt to erect one of monuments according scale of the space that he finds available. He may do this alone or in conjunction with a group. When he has finished his work on the monument or tired of it, he should send photograph to Les Levine" Les Levine.

#17 CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI Le Club Mickey Imschoot 1991Rigurously recomposing black-and-white images from a youth-magazine from the fifties, french artist Boltanski’s book explores several thematics, among them how to represent youth and childhood while enlarging the scope to questions concerning the post-war generation which is also his own.

#18 VICTOR BURGINFamilyLapp Princess Press, in association with Printed Matter, Inc.1977By adapting the format of a primer Burgin comments on the role of the family in an industrial environment. Anonymous family photographs are set against simple phrases using Lettrist modes of juxtaposition.

#19 MAURIZIO BERLINCIONI FotocoppieEdizioni Vera Biondi 1982With each page cut in two the object invites it’s readers to create new couples of those he finds sitting on a Salvador Dali sofa. Based on 84 photographs 7056 combinations can be made in this book which feels like a light-hearted variant of Oulipo-books.

#20 JOHN BALDESSARIBrutus Killed Cesar The Emily H. Davis Art Gallery 1976With each leaf repeating the same portraits but juxtaposing them by a different possible murder weapons.; a kitchen knife, a block of wood, a magnifying glass, a book of matches, pushpins, string, a dart, a pipe, et al., the books riffs on the Hitchcock’ian cliché "Let’s take murder back into the family where it belongs".

#21 WILLIAM S. BURROUGHSScrap Book 3 Claude Givaudan 1979Facsimile-reprint of William Burroughs scrap-books using one of the first Xerox-color processes. Collages of photographs and cut-ups of his own text, this is fascinating book object and document of an avant-garde writer.

#22 ARAKIThe BanquetMagazine House 1993Japanese photographer Araki has published more than 400 books, having started with a collection of Xerox books in the early seventies. The Banquet was made as a tribute to his late wife, reminiscensing their last months together through an interminable flow of brightly colored or stark black-and-white close-up shots of the food they eat together.

#25 THOMAS GALLERWalking Through Baghdad Edition fink 2009On the occasion of his exhibition ‘Walking through Baghdad with a Buster Keaton Face’ at the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Switzerland, Thomas Galler has published the first comprehensive book of his work. This catalogue is presented as an artist book that includes both documentation of his work as well as his artistic strategies and reference materials. Halfway between an artist-book and a monograph, this is an overview of new work and a retrospective, a publication and an exhibition.

#26 BRUNO JAKOBThe TouchKirchgemeinde Grossmünster Zürich 2014Catalogue, this book wears it’s concept on it’s sleeve. "Take a black board. Let the spirits enter you mind freely. Listen to what they have to say. Pour water from a bucket onto the board. Photograph", these are the instructions the artist send to the team that was preparing his exhibition in a small art center in Switzerland.

#27 ANSELM KIEFERHoffmann Von Fallersleben Auf Helgoland Groninger Museum 1980Full-page black and white photographs of snow, ice, flames and fire pits, capitalizing on the bleaching and haloing effects of photographing fire and ice. Anselm Kiefer, known for his mixed media history of paintings and sculpture, made two photobooks, Die Donauquelle (1978) and Hoffmann von Fallersleben auf Helgoland (1980), quite different to his more famous huge lead books which require several assistants to turn the pages. They document performances and events at his studio.

#28 JOSEPH KOSUTHLetters from Wittgenstein Abridged in Ghent Imschoot 1992Some background is provided by the collected letters of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s friend and collaborator, Paul Engelmann, upon which photographs of the ongoing destruction of Ghent, Belgium are hand-tipped.

#29 CHRISTIAN MARCLAY Cyanotypes JRP-Ringier / Graphicstudio 2011The photograms in this book are made with music cassette tapes that Marclay physically disassembled. In some, the plastic cases form austere grids, in others, spools of unwound tapes have been strewn over the surface of the paper in loops and twists.

#30 HUGH SCOTT DOUGLASCyanotypes Mousse Publishing 2012Very much like a repertoire of patterns, this artist’s book is a succession of close ups of the cyanotype works made by Hugh Scott-Douglas in 2011-12. By using the cyanotype process the artist creates paintings through non-painterly means (photography, alas), and illustrates the relation between medium and process and between surface and material.

#31 RICHARD PRINCEAdult Comedy Action Drama Scalo 1995"One of the best and most comprehensive books about Richard Prince, with all the salient elements of his work included. Prince’s genius here is not so much the representation of the individual pieces themselves, but rather how their juxtaposition in book form creates a commentary not only on himself, but also on the culture he portrays, manipulates, and ultimately shapes".

#32 EDWARD RUSCHARoyal Road Test Self-published 1967"Basically some time in 1966 the artist Ed Ruscha, his buddy writer and musician Mason Williams (‘Classical Gas’) and the photographer Patrick Blackwell took Highway 91 out of Los Angeles into the desert in a a 1963 Buick LaSabre. Getting up to 90 miles per hour on a deserted road with Ed Ruscha driving, Mason Williams (designated thrower) ejected a Royal Typewriter from the window and Patrick Blackwell photographed the incident including shots of the scattered parts and the keys. As I recall there is one shot off a letter draped from a cactus in the desert scrub. The core of the book is a photographic examination of the wreckage of the typewriter strewn over many square yards; it is done in an ironic, deadpan Consumer Report, forensic documentary style with times and wind speed etc., There is a vague suspicion that one or two shots may have been set up or ‘improved’. One cataloguer notes that it ‘is all done with a species of quasi-scientific gravitas...’".

#33 STEPHANIE SOLINASDominique Lambert Alaska Editions 201021 portraits of french, male and female, called Dominique Lambert. Those that agreed to participate send a self-portrait and their answers to the Marcel Proust personality questionnaire. The artist passed the questionnaires on to a scientific committee, who then described the person in words, this information was passed on to a police profiler sketch artist, who drew a portrait of the presumed person. Using the drawing Solinas photographed any person that would resemble it. The work took seven years in the making, and is a part of the artists’ larger exploration of identity, and is only finalized once acquired, as the prospective client "activates" the book by writing to the artist who then sends the envelopes with the actual self-portraits of the 21 participating Dominique Lamberts.

#35 ARI MARCOPOULOSDirectory Nieves 2011Marcoupoulos’ huge anthology of black and white photographs documents a life in transit. The reader is welcomed into an intimate circle of friends and tags along as Marcopoulos and his camera explore the wilds of America.

#36 JACK SMITHThe Beautiful Book The Dead Language 1962One of a projected edition of 200 copies handmade by Smith and his associates. The actual number produced would appear to have been drastically fewer than Smith’s ambitious projection. The book comprises 19 original silver nitrate contact prints pasted one to a page. These photographs – which constitute the sole contents of the work – had been produced mainly during the course of extended shooting sessions in Smith’s Lower East Side apartment. Most date from the winter of 1962, although a few are earlier – including the final ‘signature’ photograph, a portrait of the artist on the steps beneath the Brooklyn Bridge taken by filmmaker Ken Jacobs. Nearly half the photographs feature the artist Marian Zazeela, who provided the design for the book’s silk-screened cover.

#37 GILBERT & GEORGEDark ShadowNigel Greenwood 1976Seminal work combining fictional text and photograph, juxtaposed elegantly on each page, the simplicity of it’s design and execution help us perceive the book as a sculpture, pulp novel, art work, among a dizziying array of other possible angles.

#38 KEN OHARAOne Tsukiji shokan 1970In 1970 Ken Ohara created a body of work called “One,” for which he randomly selected people on the streets of New York and asked if he could take their picture. The resulting full-face portraits are larger than life, close-cropped black-and-white photographs that are as striking as they are unsettling. Ohara’s subjects vary in gender, race and age but the portraits come together as a homogenous whole interested in the face and it’s hidden energies.

#39 FIONA TANVox Populi: Norway Book Works 2006Commissioned to make a new work for the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo, Fiona Tan collected family photograph albums from as broad and varied a background as possible, eventually selecting two hundred and sixty-seven images that would be individually framed and presented in the Parliament building. For this book, she revisits the entire collection of images—intimate family portraits that capture private if familiar moments: the birth of a child, birthdays, family gatherings, adolescence, holidays, brothers and sisters, first loves, favorite places. Loosely arranged within three familiar strains – Portrait, Home and Nature – unexpected cross-references and playful associations unfold. While a visual document of a country’s people, there is nothing obvious that would identify VOX POPULI, Norway as being Norwegian. The reader is drawn into a seductive and popular ethnography where images of the private and intimate challenge the ideology of official national portraits, and yet also assume a master narrative that defines the whole. This book then expanded into a series about Great Britain, Japan, Switzerland, et al.

#40 MARTIN KIPPENBERGER Michael / Michi 1989Two portrait books in Leporello-form, on published by a gallery, one by an unnamed publisher, with slight differences.

#41 SOPHIE RISTELHUEBERFait Editions Hazan 1992Sophie Ristelhueber’s Fait, which in French means ‘fact’ or ‘what was done,’ remains one of the most powerful statements about the aftermath of war. In October of 1991, Ristelhueber photographed the battle-scarred landscape of Kuwait following the end of the first Gulf war with Iraq.

#42 KIKUJI KAWADAChizu / The Map Bijutsu-shuppansha 1965With photographs taken in Nagasaki between 1961 and 1963 Kawada Kikuji has created a disturbing document of violence and trouble in a book designed exuberantly by Kohei Sugiura. One of most referenced Japanese post-war books it’s hard to ever see a good copy, as only 500 books were made.

#43 BRAD FREEMANSim WarVaricose Productions 1991 Early example of how rephotographed television and video game images of simulated and real war raise questions as to how these technologies separate people from the tragic consequences of war. A parallel autobiographical text relates the author’s adolescent experience in a hospital with men wounded in war.

#45 KLAUS STAECK Pornografie Steinbach / Giessen 1971Highly political and yet very esthetic book recontextualizing press images in a biting commentary on society, violence and capitalism.

#46 LESLIE ROBERT KRIMSThe Deerslayers Self-published 1972"Near the end of Vietnam war, radical leftist activists using nasty ad hominem attacks, characterized any gun-toting hunter as a murderer; police, as some may remember, were called pigs. Tongue only slightly in cheek, I suggested that the deer trussed to cars, pick-ups, and campers-commonplace in upstate New York during hunting season-were best understood as sculpture, and a performance. Hermann Nitsche would enjoy that. The title was suggested by James Fennimore Cooper’s novel, The Deerslayer. Those pictures were meant to conjure a creative appraisal and positive spin for a utilitarian sport practiced by many people living outside the radical-intellectual epicenter of New York City. Most deer hunters ate what they shot. And it’s my guess that many lefty intellectuals would have strapped-on a Glock and gone hunting, too, if deer ran wild in Central Park" Les Krims.

#47 PETER DOWNSBROUGHIn Place New York 1977One of many artist books of this prolific artist and book maker combining the use of photographs, words and graphical elements. An interest in urban life is concretized by a reflection on body and orientation.

#48 NANCY HOLTRansackedPrinted Matter 1980Photos and text are combined in a tragic account of the last days in the life of an elderly woman - the artist’s aunt - who is robbed and abused by her housekeeper. The book is sober, yet elegantly designed, and the way in which private life, history and architectural aspects are mixed on the basis of a captivating story is quite breathtaking.

#49 ERIK VAN DER WEIJDEDer Baum 4478 2010

The book presents a series of 44 photographs the artist has taken during the past few years in different places, in each of which a tree stands in front of a specific background.

#50 YTO BARRADAA Guide To Trees for Governors and Gardeners Deutsche Guggenheim 2011An exhibition catalogue in the guise of a « modest » proposal to gardening a fictitious city. The book is made of five papers of varying stock, color and finish, corresponding to the “manual’s” diverse sections. By experimenting with graphic design, different texts and ways of treating her own photographs the artist created a multi-layered yet elegant object with different entry points and layers of engaging it’s reader.

#51 GERHARD RICHTERWald Walther König 2008Wald assembles 285 photographs that Richter has taken since 2005 in a forest close to Cologne. Almost all the photographs were taken during the autumn and winter months: the trees have dropped their leaves, and the terrain is often covered with dry foliage. Gerhard Richter arranged the photographs into different types: photographs that focus on vertical tree trunks, on branches lying on the woodland’s ground, and on horizontally piled logs or on diagonally broken branches. In contrast to the loose typology of the photographs, Gerhard Richter uses a random generator for the selection of the text. The text, deriving from Waldung - a German magazine about forestry - becomes a senseless collage of words, which originally were connected to the topic forest within the magazine.

#52 EDWARD RUSCHA Catalog Minneapolis Institute Of Art Minneapolis Institute of Arts 1972This book, designed by Ruscha and Ed Foster, accompanied the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ exhibition of Rucha’s prints, drawings and books held in Minneapolis from April 18 to May 28, 1972. Includes a bibliography of the artist’s photobooks and prints. Illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs. Final third of the book is blank.

#53 CAROL BOVEPlants & MammalsHorticultural Society of New York 2009"The photos of flowers in this book have been taken from the gardening catalogs that came to my house between 2002 and 2005. I composed a timeline with the photos according to each flower’s date of origin. By no means is this an exhaustive encyclopedia of the twentieth century’s daffodils. I hoped to have flowers for each year but instead found the flowers in varying concentrations throughout the century. The daffodil bulb itself is a kind of record. It has the potential to persist indefinitely, blooming again every year. The maintenance of this living library depends on people keeping track of the flowers and choosing to grow them. Current and past tastes, breeding innovations, and the ease of growing, all contribute to determining what remains from the past to present" Carol Bove.

#54 MAURIZIO NANNUCCISessante verdi naturali, da una indagine Taxipalais / Firenze Renzo Spagnoli 197Nannucci’s chromatic study of nature in a beautiful leporello which uses the grid to at once abstract and concretize his impressions of nature.

#55 FISCHLI & WEISSSichtbare Welt Walther König 2000An artist’s book collecting images taken on the Swiss artist duo’s worldwide travels - over 2,800 color photos arranged in grids of eight per page. While the work in exhibitions is presented by light-boxes, the book, with it’s beautiful adaptation of a Pantone-fan as a principle to organize colors, and the artists declared love of the cliché of beauty, is an object in itself that needs no outside support.

#56 ROSEMARIE TROCKELJedes Tier ist eine Künstlerin Prospexus 1993An artists’ book produced as an exhibition catalogue by the Anders Tornberg Gallery in conjunction with an exhibition in November and December 1993. Includes an attached leather bookmark, black slipcase, and a smaller supplement titled "Footnotes" consisting of photographs and text laid in a recessed compartment in the back cover. The title translates as "Every animal is an artist" (in the female form) and the photographs present sculptures made by animals.

#57 RICHARD NONASMy Life On The Floor Buffalo Press 1974"The main purpose of my studio isn’t actually to make things. It’s to force myself to look at old work. And that’s why I have so much shit. I need to be in a situation where I can’t not see the work. I’m seeing it in the worst possible way, I understand that, but what happens is, if we are talking now and someone knocks on the door at the other end of the loft, and I’m rushing over there to answer the door, out of the corner of my eye I see something on the wall, and I think, I hate that. It could be something I made 10 years ago, it could be something I made yesterday, and I stop, look at that thing, and figure out what’s not working. I’m totally willing to take a piece apart, to change it, to throw it out, to break it, to make something else out of it, because the point is to figure out one way to say this, to refine a vocabulary" Richard Nonas, Blouin.

#58 CARL ANDREQuincy book + catalogueAddison Gallery of American Art 1973With photographs by several photographers the book is at once an exploration of the artists’ native town Quincy, Massachusetts, and it’s working-class past, while showing inspirations for his minimalist sculptures in the form of black-and-white photographs of headstones and monuments. The book was published as a catalogue to a show of his sculptures.

"In the late 60s, Bruce Nauman produced two very similar artist’s books: CLEARSKY

(or CLEA RSKY) and LAAIR. These titles are usually referred to as CLEAR SKY and

LA AIR, inserting a sensible break in both that the cover words do not actually possess

(Nauman’s catalogue raisonne does so, so we will here). Both books are quite short, stapled 12 x 12 pamphlets, and contain no text, just full page pictures of the sky. In the first title, the skies are, well, yes, clear. In the second, the skies are, well, not so clear as you might imagine. The more common of the two, LA AIR, was included in the Artists and Photographs box set produced by Multiples, Inc. (1970) in an edition of 1000 copies(according to the CR). CLEAR SKY, published by Leo Castelli, was produced a few years earlier (1967-68 says the CR), but the edition size is unknown. Given how rarely the book surfaces for sale, however, one would guess the print run would be smaller than the later LA AIR run".

#61 WOLFGANG TILLMANS Total Solar Eclipse Galerie Daniel Buchholz 1999The mystery and magic of a total solar eclipse is captured based on drawings, charts, and photographs made during the years 1979–1999, this fine little exhibition catalogue offers a glimpse of the awe surrounding these celestial events.

#62 LESLIE ROBERT KRIMSFictcryptokrimsographs Humpy Press Inc. 1975Documenting the photographic process « invented » by it’s author, who can easily be called the funniest photographer of his generation.

#63 HANS-PETER FELDMANNDer ÜberfallHake 1975A bank-robbery and hostage taking in a small town in Germany produced a wave of articles all centering around a single shot of the criminals, who were then, in accompanying articles, presumed to be either italian, greek or turkish. Ironizing the stereotypical thinking of the press Feldmann nonetheless favors the image itself and the differences in printing and reproduction, over the concept of the book.

#64 CLAUDE CLOSKY / OLIVIER ZAHMMagazine Purple Books 1998Something like a mid-term career retrospective catalog: french conceptual artist and book maker Claude Closky spares us no joke in combining the ugly and ephemeral in a visual and conceptual tour de force.

#65 PAOLO GIOLI La Conchiglia Dissoluta Self-published 1990Polaroids of body-parts by italian artist and film-maker Gioli, this book certainly presents a cross-over between performance aspects and more sculptural interests.

#66 SOPHIE NYS Catalogue Version VI Circuit 2012"Sophie Nys is interested in history: art history, history of philosophy, history of the great figures of historical importance. This eclecticism is found in her work in the form of thematic declinations and variations. Never objective but always precise, Sophie Nys’ work discards historical and scientific linearity in favour of an approach based on intuitive research and free associations. The volume ‘Catalogue Version VI’ is the complete version of a work in VI parts initiated in August 2001 and depicts hundreds of pages of photographed art works in museums and galleries, together with their name plates and descriptions".

#67 HANS EIJKELBOOMIn De Krant1978 The second book by Dutch conceptual artist Hans Eijkelboom, which consists of reproductions of newspaper articles with photographs of banal small-town events into which Eijkelboom succeeded to get himself photographed. Eijkelboom is a prolific bookmaker since the seventies, and an early practinioneer of self-published books, which figure as an interesting cross-over between conceptual and photographic strategies.

#68 BATIA SUTERParallel Encyclopedia Roma Publications 2007The result of a long term investigation, this voluminous encyclopaedia of Batia Suter contains solely images collected from other books, and reads as an exhilarating and extremely rich filmic sequence. Suter’s interest lies not only in the iconographic value of images and the way that the human brain processes visual information, but also the causes by which images become charged with associative values. The book is a collection of possible future histories.

#69 CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMSPrinted In Germany Walther König 2014Printed in Germany is the second volume in an ambitious series of books developed by Williams in conjunction with his first major museum survey, Following the first publication, The Production Line of Happiness, an exhibition catalogue that relied more heavily on text than image, Printed in Germany was conceived to exist as a stand-alone visual object and extend the artist’s conceptual and aesthetic concerns into book form. It reproduces a carefully curated selection of Williams’s painstakingly constructed photographs and features striking graphic design in the near-complete absence of language, with no essay, captions, or even a title page.

#71 SOPHIE CALLETito Self-published 1980 -1990Through rephotographed televised reportages of Tito’s death set against newspaper cuttings of the same event this scrap-book has a strange impersonal touch, yet feels fragile and touching.

#72 MIKE KELLEYThe UncannySonsbeek 93 / Fred Hoffman 1993For his contribution to Sonsbeek 93, Kelley chose not to create an installation, but to curate an exhibition, albeit an exhibition bearing all the hallmarks of Kelley’s aesthetic. It included artworks by Duchamp, Nauman, Bellmer and many others, alongside waxworks, medical and scientific photographs, and anonymous objects with both high and (mostly) low cultural pedigrees. This book accompanied the exhibition and includes Kelley’s extraordinary essay, Playing with Dead Things. The Uncanny became a legendary work and was later restaged in London and Vienna, confirming its status as one of the epochal exhibitions of the past 20 years.

#73 ANNETTE MESSAGERD’Approche J.D. Carr. 1995This artist book comes in three parts: "Mes Hommes de Protection" (My Protection Men); "Mes Attaques" (My Attacks); "Mes Amis" (My Friends), each part containing a certain number of orginal b/w photos, gelatine silver prints, and an original text written by hand by Annette Messager in black ink on a translucent tracing paper paper sheet.

#74 ROB PRUITTHoly Crap 38th Street Publishers 2010Holy Crap collects hundreds of photographs of outdoor church signs, whose punchy maxims, written to attract visitors and provide sage advice to passersby, most often fall short of the mark. Artist Rob Pruitt relishes the misspellings, accidental double entendres, and awkward references to popular culture employed by just about every denomination of the Christian church.

#75 STEVE MCQUEENQueen and Country The British Council Visual Arts Publications 2010"Queen and Country" was realized in 2007 as a commissioned work, and deals with the artists recollection of camaraderie among the troops and his concerns about the lack of appropriate recognition for soldiers being killed in Iraq. The book reproduces one individual facsimile stamp on each page, with the name, rank, unit, date of death and age opposite. They are preceded by a poem, Requiem, by Derek Walcott and succeeded by a page containing the statement, “This book is dedicated to all victims of the Iraq war”, and a chronology of the project.

#76 JONATHAN MONKBlue Peter Tramway 2008A multi-layered scrapbook of ideas collaged onto the 1969 Blue Peter annual mixed with a selection of invitation cards to exhibitions and inventions by important conceptual artists of the 60s, 70s and beyond.